the pointless weblog

Doctor Who and the Terror of the Autons was written by Terrance Dicks and published by Target Books in 1975. It was based on a Doctor Who TV serial written by Robert Holmes. The book contains 6 full-page illustrations by Alan Willow, who presumably also did the cover illustrations, although it doesn’t actually say.

I’ve never seen the TV version of this story, but as it contains an evil circus, The Master, malevolent murderous plastic dolls,  a gigantic crab/spider/octopus beast, telephone wires of death and plastic daffodils that are programmed to kill each and every one of us, I expect it is the scariest thing ever broadcast on TV.

Despite all that, the most shocking moment comes on page 55.

I don’t think I’ve ever heard the term “garaged” before, and it’s making me shudder mildly with revulsion.

The illustrations that pop-up throughout the book are uniformly excellent. I would usually worry slightly about them spoilers, but the blurb does enough of that already.

Spacecraft Top Trumps were another Waddingtons pack from the late 70s or early 80s. There were 32 cards in the set.

This was another of our favourite packs of top trumps. It’s a fairly incongruous collection of real world spaceships, famous UFO photos, excellent science fiction illustrations, and solen photos of Star Wars and Battlestar Galactica spaceships renamed and reappropriated.

The Centaurus spaceship was drawn by Chris Foss. I’ve seen a different coloured version of that image used on a book cover before. I don’t know who any of the other illustrators are, though.

The Aliens and Space Warriors top trumps set was released by Waddingtons in 1992. The set contains 30 cards, plus a title card with the rules on the back.

By the 90s, Top Trumps monster artwork had gone into serious decline from their Horror top trumps heydey. This pack of Aliens and Space Warriors was pretty uniformly disappointing. With the incredible Oblit Fet card, though, it was nice to see them keep their tradition of mild copyright infringement going, so it wasn’t all completely bad.

Also at some point between the early 80s and the early 90s, packs of top trumps went from having 32 cards down to having 30. If that terrifying rate of decline has continued, the poor children of today would only get 26 cards in a  pack. It would hardly be worth it.

And I know that the Smet is supposed to basically be a Tribble or whatever, but he really reminds me of a Jib-Jib, possibly the best Fighting Fantasy monster of them all. A Jib-Jib gone all fat and pampered.

The Volg is an exciting science fiction story, written by my older brother in the late 70s or early 80s.

The Volg tells the story of The Volgs, a race of 8ft tall robots made from an indestructable allow, immune to radiation and with caterpillar tracks for feet, were created by the Golvs, blob creatures from a far  distant planet that were intent on taking over the world. Solar System after solar system has fallen to their might, and now only Keg Corburn and Chuck Johnson of the Earth Defense Forces can stand in their way and prevent the subjugation of the human race.

Unfortunately, my brother must have gotten bored and after 20 or so pages of action the whole thing fades out in the middle of a sentence, leaving us with 50 empty pages and then at the end a spaceship design and a couple of stars on fire.

I think he must have written The Volg when he was about 8. I am basing this on the Empire Strikes Back poster he has used as a cover for his notebook. I could be wrong. Unfortunately my brother denied all knowledge of writing any of this, so we will never know for certain. It appears to have been written after watching nothing but Doctor Who and Battlestar Galactica for several lifetimes, which probably had some effect on his long term memory.

The most galling thing about all of this obviously is that even at 8 my brother was better at drawing and writing than I’ll ever be.

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Space Mobiles by Brian Knight (published in 1984 by The Halesworth press) contained the plans necessary to create five or so beautifully cumbersome spaceships.

My little brother had the big blue spaceship in his room for years, so the plans for that have already been used up, but the book still contains the plans for the two spaceships on the back cover, so it’s not completely useless. I might spend this afternoon making them, ruining them forever with my ineptitude.

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